Kashiana Singh (Diaspora Dual Identities)

Kashiana Singh

How Families Remember

 

Like a spider weaving its web,
focused on the white humility
of silken strands, each thread
unbreakable, yet extraordinary.

 

Like the old letter found,
its words curled in the cursive of love,
or a slip of grief braided in audacious
expectations, brittle leaves forgotten.

 

Like the game of hide and seek—
the thrill of being found, unfound,
devouring the last apricot behind
a hinged door, plenitude in nothing.

 

Like the language of a bespoke snake,
its tongue forked with the unspoken,
its venom eager as a lover’s sigh,
the calm ache of a reptile's embrace.

 

Like the wound that outlasts pain

throbbing around the skin so red

that blood itself seems pale, as if

ignoring disease will make it leave.

 

Like we live, in a constant swerve

none of us home, forever unsure

of whether we were coming, going

or had already been done, undone.

 

 

Fursat: What Happens When Time Is the Space Between Words?

 

Spend the day with instructions for coffee—
let coarseness seep into the percolator sieve,
perking its presence with a whistled signal,
brewing genetic memories, totems of place,
drip by drip from the spout, just as potent.

 

All I smell some days is a candle in a glass jar,
on the carved Kashmiri walnut chest,
its flickering light casting folds in the air,
my mother’s home etched in the creases of time,
waiting like pressed flowers, curling at the edges.

 

infinite possibilities

and then the first gadget

arrives

 

Pre-stories

the ink of ancestors

rises through newborn skins.

 

 

When Kashiana is not writing, she lives to embody her TEDx talk theme of Work as Worship into her every day. Her second full-length collection, Woman by the Door was released in 2022 with Apprentice House Press. Her newest full-length collection, Witching Hour was released in December 2024 with Glass Lyre Press. She lives in North Carolina and serves as Managing Editor for Poets Reading the News as well as President of the North Carolina Poetry Society. Besides being a poet practitioner, Kashiana serves as vice president of the healthcare services industry.
 

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Setu, April 2025